


Too Rash, Too Unadvised, Too Sudden

by rotrude



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: 16-year olds, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Distant future, First Love, First Time, M/M, Teenagers, pre-apocalyptic scenario
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-09
Updated: 2014-06-09
Packaged: 2018-02-04 00:55:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1761173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rotrude/pseuds/rotrude
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merlin and Arthur's affection for one another blooms as hot as any adolescent love, but things aren't as easy for them as for any two teenagers. To start with, they belong to different worlds. Merlin is Emrys, the Temple's last hope. Arthur's the son of that king who hates the temple so. If that were not enough, there's the matter of Merlin's vows, the breaking of which would entail Albion's doom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Too Rash, Too Unadvised, Too Sudden

**Author's Note:**

> With many thanks to the lovely argentsleeper for the swift beta!

Merlin walks towards the balcony, vines and creepers winding around the shutters, locking them in place. Merlin gives one a shove and steps out, where he's surrounded by a bower of greenery, emerald bright, little leaves opening around him and straining for the suns, dew fresh, their shapes irregular, jagged. He looks up to the twin suns. They both flame orange, sailing across a red sky, streaked through with white clouds.

He sighs. The suns look much closer today than they did a week ago. It can't be. They have two more years at the very least, which means he must have imagined it. There's no other reasonable explanation. Still, the thought chases a sickness into his guts that almost makes him dizzy.

He kneels, frames his hands together for prayer, but a stone clinks against the glass pane behind him, and he loses his focus. He looks up, but there's nothing barring the magma-like mass of the sky up above. If he tilts his head the whole way back, he can see the spiky stony spires of the temple reaching for the heavens. He can't make out anything else. 

A second stone swishes in the ivy framing the window. Merlin peers down. At first he sees nothing but the gardens that gently roll out towards the countryside, the blades of its grass the colour of wheat. But then he squints, and amid the wind-flattened vegetation he spies someone. 

“Arthur,” he says, making sure his voice is pitched just so that it can carry over to Arthur, though hopefully not everyone in the vicinity, “what the hell are you doing here! You know you shouldn't.”

Arthur uses his sword to cut a swathe through the vegetation that dots the rise to the temple and clears a path to the shadows of Merlin's balcony. He puts his foot on the base of a crooked tree that grows at the bottom of it. “Why, because a few temple initiates say you should stay locked up in your tower, hoping the end of days doesn't strike?”

“Because they'll kill you if they find you,” Merlin says, his chest tightening at the very thought. “You know they would.”

Arthur puffs his chest out. “My father said he'd have me locked up till I'm eighteen if I left the castle and here I am. Let the temple people try.”

“Arthur,” Merlin says, straining his eyes to see if guards are around, acolytes. None seems to be, “I don't want anything to happen to you.”

“Or maybe,” Arthur says, his face tightening, his mouth pursing, “that's a nice way of telling me to bugger off.”

“No,” Merlin says, putting his palm up. “No, that's not true.” Merlin blushes to the tip of his hair. “I stand by everything I said, all of my vows.”

Arthur smiles, wide and sure, though his eyes don't match the brazen nature of that smile. They widen with amazement rather, awe, as though he wasn't expecting Merlin's confession. “Come down,” Arthur says, extending his hand out to him. “Come down, here with me.”

“But,” Merlin says, trying to think sensibly, to be the one who considers eventualities, but Arthur's defiant smile and soft eyes scramble his thoughts and prudence doesn't seem like a priority anymore. “Oh, okay, all right, but only for a short while.”

“Just come down, Merlin,” Arthur says and Merlin swears there's a smirk to his voice. It might not have been there on his face, but it's certainly lurking in his tones. “You know you want to.”

Merlin has a thousand replies to that but doesn't utter any because he does want to be with Arthur. He climbs the balcony rail and puts a foot on one of the tree branches that over-arches his window. Once he has solid footing, he half hugs the trunk and slowly proceeds downwards, seeking sturdy branches on which to put his weight. When he's low enough, he jumps, touching the ground with a hop. He straightens before Arthur and grins. 

“Couldn't you?” Arthur jiggles his hands in the air, making a gesture Merlin can't make heads or tails of. “You know, have used magic to come down?”

Merlin feels his grin stretch impossibly wide. “Where's the fun in that?”

“For a temple boy who's supposed to be ascetic you're quite ridiculous,” Arthur says, all huffy, pushing his chest out. “You know that, don't you, Merlin?”

Merlin rolls his eyes. “Well, if you're here to insult me,” he says, patting the trunk of the tree he came down from, “I can always climb back up.”

“No, no,” Arthur says, “I...”

“Well, I do hope you had something in mind coming here,” Merlin says. “Because risking your life to faff around under my window isn't very clever.”

“I do have something in mind,” Arthur says, eyes dancing. “I want to show you something. Take my hand.”

With his skin prickling with warmth that threatens to swallow him whole, his whole face just that little bit on fire, Merlin takes his hand.

“Come,” Arthur says, tugging him onwards. “You've got to see this.”

Thanks to Merlin's magic and some judicious amount of sneaking they manage to leave the temple's compound. They run across blue fields and orange fields, across green ones and across silver ones until they're so far from the temple Merlin isn't sure where they are. Woods stretch out to the east, tree trunks, grey and white. Thick vegetation unfolds in front. There is one clue though that can help him orientate himself a little bit. He can hear the sound of water crashing behind fronds.

“What's that?” Merlin asks, cocking his head, as if that will amplify the noise. “I don't get it...”

“Come and see,” says Arthur, dragging him through a clump of thick purple vegetation and to the banks of a bubbling brook. “There.”

When Merlin straightens, his eyes go wide. “By the goddess, it's beautiful.”

“Yes,” Arthur says, though he's not facing the brook but rather Merlin.

“How did you find a magic spring?”

Arthur goes scarlet. “I don't know. I've been on the lookout for magical things to show you for a while and I just chanced upon this.”

“It's great,” Merlin says, smiling up at Arthur, sure he's wearing his heart on his sleeve right now and not caring one bit. “It's... perfect.”

Arthur shrugs. “I thought you'd like it, that's all.”

“I do,” Merlin says, opening his palm wide and waiting for Arthur to take his hand. “Let's go bathe.”

Arthur hesitates but takes his hand. Together, they walk to the stream's bank, where they strip, tunic and boots first, breeches second. When they're both in small clothes they look at each other. Merlin does his best not to think of how scrawny he is, not like Arthur at all, with his muscle and his bulk, but does look to Arthur for cues as to what to do now.

Arthur does nothing. His gaze is fixed on Merlin's clavicles; colour splotches his face in patches that cover his cheeks and nose. The fact that Arthur's visibly reddening makes Merlin bold, bolder than he'd normally be. He pushes down his small clothes and steps out of them until he's standing stark naked by the stream.

Arthur's hands falter at his waistband, but then he too pulls down his undergarments. He's beautiful like that, his proportions pleasing, his skin a golden colour that's like that of the suns, the way it's supposed to be in the stories, that is, not as they are. His shoulders widen at the top and his stomach ripples with muscles, tapering off into hips that are nicely shaped, compact. His cock is pink, nicely sized – not small, not huge – lifting slightly. His legs are solid, especially at the thighs. 

Not like Merlin at all.

Merlin reaches his hand out to Arthur and, past the webbing in his throat, says, “Want to take a bath?”

“Yes,” Arthur says, his throat working. “Yes.”

The water is cool on Merlin's calves, on his legs and his chest as he wades in. It bubbles around him, the current pushing his body forwards, creating eddies that play on his skin, cool him. Its magic sings to him, awakening visions of crystal clear beauty. He laughs at the heavens, for once not thinking about the threat they present.

They swim together, he and Arthur. They crawl along the length of the stream, move about where the water is deeper, cooler, the joy of it all running down Merlin's body like the current does. They weave along, avoiding rocks and shallows, coasting the stream's basin, thick vegetation growing along both sides of the banks, nature singing her silent song that Merlin can hear well. They tread water and laugh. Sometimes they go under, diving through each other's legs. They come up, spluttering, laughing, hair plastered to their skulls and eyes red with river water. They wrestle, grab hold of each other by the arms, and try to drag the other under once again.

Only when they're completely breathless do they wade back to the bank. They sit in the grass. It tickles Merlin's skin, cradles him softly. They share a silence between them, one that makes Merlin's skin rise with goose flesh and that thrills him, with little zings that play over his tail bone. Nature's not as quiet in return. Birds chirp from the trees and insects buzz, setting the air vibrating with their song. It seems almost impossible to believe that their world is bound to extinguish itself.

“Do you think it's going to happen soon?” Merlin asks, looking at the round of the suns as they hide behind the canopy of trees overhead. “Sometimes... sometimes.”

“Sometimes what?” Arthur asks, not boisterous at all, not like he's been so far, but serious, gentle, like he's trying to understand.

“Sometimes I'm not sure I believe them.”

“About the end of days?” Arthur asks, scooting closer.

“Yes, I don't know,” Merlin says, gnawing his lower lip, raking his knees up. “I mean you can see the suns are colliding. What I don't believe is the part relating to me.”

Arthur bumps shoulders with him, his skin as cool as the stream. “Which part, _Emrys_?”

“That I'm supposed to stop it,” Merlin mumbles. “That I'm supposed to be the miracle.”

“I think you are,” Arthur says, his voice full of faith. “You are a miracle, regardless.”

“That I should keep...” Merlin buries his head in his knees, continues muttering, his lips whispering against his own skin. “Pure so I can stop it?”

“I do believe in your powers,” Arthur says. “I do believe you are going to save us, all of us in Albion.”

Merlin cocks his head. “You're omitting something, Arthur.”

“True,” Arthur says, shifting closer to wind his arm across his shoulder and kiss his temple. “Is that answer enough?”

Merlin turns, wraps his arm around the small of Arthur's back so they're steeped in a half-embrace. “No, it leaves it all up to me, deciding whether I believe all the lore or only part of it.”

“I don't want to sweet talk you,” he says, lacing their fingers together. 

“What if we all die before I can...” Merlin mumbles, “with you.”

Arthur scans the sky, squints at the red discs that camp large in it. “I won't say that that won't happen. I can't promise you'll find the way to stop it, save us all and be released from your vow so you can be a man like all others.”

“You won't persuade me?”

A sad lopsided moue scrunches up Arthur's face. “That would be unfair of me. If I tried, I would be trying to pressure you.”

Merlin almost wants to cry, isolated as he is by Arthur's upright gesture. For a moment, a brief one, Merlin wishes Arthur wasn't so noble, then he realises that would amount to not wanting Arthur to be the way he is. That's impossible. “I wish this was easy,” Merlin says, realising that if he gives in, he'll be risking their world as they know it, people's lives. “I want you so much right now, it hurts here.” He touches his sternum. “But...” He looks around, at the beautiful testimonials of nature, a sign of its stubbornness for life surrounding them. “But what if...”

 

“If it was up to me...” Arthur sucks in a big breath Merlin can taste the rattle of and locks gazes with him. “If it was up to me, I'd...” Arthur's eyes round, as his mouth does. His shoulders settle wide. “I'd make you my consort and that would be it.”

Merlin doesn't say what he thinks, that it's a beautiful thought, but impossible. He took his vows years ago standing in a shadowed nave brightened by moon dust. He turns and puts his chin on Arthur's shoulder, holding him tight, close to his heart. He supposes he's bleeding feelings, that they're now as evident, as transparent, as he feels. It's as though the movements of his heart have become plainly visible, as if he's pure soul, with no body to shield him from scrutiny, a soul Arthur can easily read. 

He kisses Arthur's cheek, rubs his face against it. He kisses his jaw, his chin, his other cheek. Smooths his mouth across the smears of a blush that paint Arthur's skin a deep red, mutters words against it that have the same tone of an incantation. They're not; they're the sounds his soul makes when it feels so light as it does now, promises he keeps to himself. He grabs Arthur's face with his hands, tracing the line of his mouth with his thumb, moving to the bridge of his nose, spanning the balls of his fingers down its length, the sharp of it, the point. He wants to learn Arthur by heart; he never wants this to be taken from him. They share a look, Arthur's eyes so different this close, brighter, the pupil wider. Arthur catches his mouth. Merlin can feel the press of his lips against his, taste his breath, sense the warm caress that it is.

 

This closeness is a shock to Merlin's system, a brand new experience. It makes butterflies flutter in his stomach; it stamps a brilliant kind energy onto his body. It's like his magic, and not. His magic is a known friend, a warm fire that inhabits his frame. Kissing Arthur is different; it's like trying to master a fire that wants to overwhelm the world. It's unexpected.

Merlin draws Arthur closer. Arthur traces his lips with his tongue, wet and tentative. He parts them with a slick touch, his tongue dipping in Merlin's mouth. Merlin drags him onto his lap and cups his face, sharing in the kiss, flicking his tongue against Arthur's. 

“We shouldn't,” Arthur says, his voice coming out husky, his knees framing Merlin's thighs. 

“We shouldn't,” Merlin agrees, because he's heard the warnings too many times not to be aware of the dangers, but instead of stopping he nuzzles Arthur's throat, rains a parade of kisses on it, sucks on it, until Arthur grabs him by the hair. 

Expecting he'll be stopped, Merlin's body locks, his heart flooding with sadness for the impending loss, but instead of pushing him away, Arthur angles his head so he can direct the drift of Merlin's kisses.

Merlin works his mouth raw against the throat Arthur bares to him when he throws his head back. Merlin sucks and bites, licks and tastes, till he has a sense of the angles and planes of Arthur's upper body, the rise of Arthur's Adam's apple, the roughness of his stubble, the tension of his tendons. He skims his shoulders and clavicle, places his mouth in the hollow where they end. He licks there, tasting the salt of him, coating his tongue with Arthur's sweat. 

Arthur moans, makes the most vulnerable sound that's ever come out from his mouth, and digs his fingers into his scalp. He only moves Merlin's head away from his throat to kiss him. At first their mouths don't fit, with Merlin straining upwards and Arthur panting too hard to match, but then they find an angle, and Arthur's lips curl softly around the seam of his, shift. He sucks each lip into his mouth, then pushes his tongue between them and inside. 

Merlin is lost in the wanting of Arthur; nothing makes sense to him anymore but him. When the kiss fades to a touch that is almost nothing Merlin renews it, then touches his chin, neck, shoulder and chest with his lips. Arthur exhales when Merlin rounds his lips around his nipple. He catches him to him and rolls him under. 

Arthur pushes Merlin down on the fresh grass, dew beading his body. The earth smells like blossoms in spring, like a hayfield in the rain. As Arthur moves between his legs, late-blooming flowers open around him, the scent of him and them deep in his nostrils. As Arthur opens him up, Merlin grips a handful of grass in his palm, twists it in his fist as tremors shake him. Arthur's touch liquefies his marrow, saps his bone structure, hardens his cock flat against his belly. Merlin rips at the grass blades; they release oils that coat his hand and smells that climb to his sinuses, confuse him, make him drunk on them. 

His cock oozes musk on his skin.

Arthur pushes his thighs upwards and wider apart. Merlin lies there. He wants to pull Arthur to him, sink his fingers in his shoulders and force him close, but he knows he'd leave his skin riddled with bruises, so he doesn't do that. He revels in such things as the press of his knees against his sides, the stickiness of Arthur belly against his, the brush of his cock against his inner thigh, and does his best to hold himself together, not come apart into a million atoms that will rain over the whole of Albion. But when Arthur presses in, working the head of his cock inside him, Merlin does grab him by the neck, where his skin is slippery with sweat that smells of him. As Arthur rocks himself forwards he shakes, just as much as Merlin does, if not more, from head to toe. When he bottoms out, he sobs. Merlin puts kisses to his temple then, his fingers indenting the skin of Arthur's shoulders, his muscles locking then releasing with the rush that comes to him from feeling so completely full, from having his bones softened and melted by one single action Merlin hadn't contemplated being quite so devastating before.

“Oh gods,” Arthur says, his eyes becoming bigger, full of surprise. "I... Are you alright?"

"Yes," Merlin says, because he doesn't think he's ever been better, or felt quite so much as right now. "Yes."

To make it even clearer, Merlin shores his hips against Arthur, so that Arthur sinks all the way inside. At that Arthur releases a puff of breath against his shoulder. It's wet and warm and it tickles Merlin. 

"Arthur," Merlin says and though he is not sure how to express what he wants, Arthur seems to get it, for he starts thrusting in. His are shallow motions that are all about the yield of flesh. They spread warmth through Merlin together with a subtle kind of electricity that irradiates his body. It's good, so much so, that everything seems brighter now. He can feel his heart thud in his chest, and he's aware of the goose flesh rising on his skin, of every ripple that shakes him into low-key tremors. He's conscious of the weight of Arthur on top of him and of the warmth of him inside him. He's become aware of a myriad things he was forgetful of before, and at the centre of the storm sits his body, which has become a vehicle for pleasure, for the disassembling of him into component parts that are zinging with joy. It's so much, he can't take it all in its entirety, so Merlin buries his face in his shoulder, chin against bone, breathing in time with Arthur, a sound escaping him each time Arthur homes in, his lips a hair's breadth away from Merlin's temple.

Arthur is all over him too, pressing closer, a hand at his hip, fanned wide, the other at his shoulder. When Merlin turns his head to catch a kiss, his breath mingles with Merlin's in a mist that tastes of them both. When he starts going faster, Arthur bows his head, his sodden fringe falling forwards, his parted lips scraping along the length of Merlin's throat. 

Merlin shatters. He calls out Arthur's name, his voice raspy, his eyes scalding with tears he won't shed but that do cloud his vision. "Arthur," he says again, feverish from the impact of what is going on, Arthur pressing him down against the supple earth, the burden of him, sweaty, heavier by the moment, inside and on top of him. 

Merlin had never pictured such brightness being part of his world, not even in his wildest dreams and yet here it is. Although his wildest dreams did feature Arthur and secret touches, his smile and his lips and his eyes. But this is perfect as it is, and Merlin can't wish it undone. Maybe he's a horrible person for that, but he can't think about that now. He can't process at all.

“Merlin, I," Arthur murmurs in his ear, his voice pitched so low Merlin strains to hear. "I think.. I think I'm going to..."

Merlin knows: he feels that way too, as if he's going to come apart. Spasms and jitters weave through his body. He points his toes in the soil, lets his legs lock, hooks his arm around Arthur's nape, so he can keep him there, angled for a kiss.

“Whatever happens," Merlin says as emotion wells up inside him together with his pleasure, "whatever the people at the temple say, I'm... your man, Arthur.” 

Arthur's hands skid up his sweat-slippery hips. His thrusts get jerky. “I’ll give up the crown when it comes to me. I'm going to be your knight instead," Arthur says with such a fierceness he breaks Merlin's heart in a score of pieces. "We'll save Albion, together.”

The words might be sentimental, supporting the kind of knight in shining armour honour code Arthur respects so and Merlin is doubtful of, but they buoy Merlin. They convince him he's not alone in his mission to make a difference, in his quest to save everyone as he's meant to. He threads his fingers through Arthur's hair and pulls him into a kiss that Merlin can't make slow or gentle however much he wants to. Instead it's feverish and deep, a mesh of tongues and teeth and spit, of lips sticking wetly together.

On a sharp inhale that makes his nostrils flutter, Arthur tears away. He throws his head back and braces his arms, till his tendons and vein stick out blue and purple. He flexes his back; his muscles rippling under Merlin's fingers. He slams in and in.

Merlin arches his body into it, thrashes his head, can't stop curling around the well of bright hotness that unravels his insides. The breath is most definitely punched out of him when Arthur's rocking becomes fitful. 

For his part, Merlin pushes his cock into his fist, fast but desultory. “I don't think I," Merlin says. "No, I, no, I can't."

Arthur's head snaps subtly up; his eyes open wide. His brow gets lined with furrows that look like pain. Out of his puffed up lips that Merlin wants to kiss again come vows of fealty, declarations Merlin is sure Arthur wouldn't make if they weren't so entangled.

Borne on the wings of a mad, slightly delirious flood of love, Merlin kisses his wrist, wherever he can reach, utters whispers against his skin that are really blessings. A keen spasm works through him and lances him with joy.

“Please come with me," Arthur says, as his body tightens and he spills warmth inside Merlin. “Please, do it with me."

His hips shoot out in a few last, rough thrusts that coax Merlin into a place where everything is bright light and beauty and magic playing around his body. He contracts around Arthur. Distantly, he can hear him keen and equally as if from a great height he can feel him lap his tongue at Merlin's neck, like a possessive young lion. 

It's only when the tremors have washed over him like a receding tide that Merlin sees Arthur's loopy smile and makes out the light in his eyes. "Hello," he says then. He could tease him, remind him of his vows and watch him clam up, clothe himself in his pride like a peacock, but he doesn't because he's quite fond of Arthur and wants to bask in his volatile softness a little longer. Besides, if he does, his own displays of vulnerability will become fair game too. He's not sure he wants to tell Arthur that he'd give him everything in the world, that he'd lay his magic at his feet, that he'd stop time if he could, so that they could be held in its perfect cradle forever and the world would never come to an end. 

He'd give his life for Arthur willingly. The old gods know, he will save their world because Arthur's in it. It might be appallingly selfish, but there you have it.

“Hi," Arthur says, not knowing what's going on through Merlin's brain, the well of his secrets. His rounded eyes and stretched-wide smile make him look silly, addled, and the more dear to Merlin because of that. "How are you doing?"

"All right," Merlin says, scratching flecks of white come off his stomach. 

Arthur shoves an elbow against his ribs. "All, right, all right, I thought, you'd say blissed out at least."

"Why, are you?" Merlin asks, trying to bite down on the grin that wants to bloom on his lips.

Arthur rolls onto his back, rests his head on his bent arm, and snaps a blade of grass off. "I've never felt like this before," he says, toying with his stem, looking at the foliage arching above them.

"That could be either good or bad," Merlin says, as he turns onto his side, angles his head just so he can take Arthur in.

"Mmmm," Arthur says, squinting into the distance.

"I mean you must have an idea," Merlin argues, more for the sake of it, because he feels light and worry-free, than because he has an actual point. "Was it different good or different blergh?"

"How would I know, Merlin?" Arthur says, his mouth thinning.

The truth dawns on Merlin. "Oh."

Arthur doesn't say anything.

Merlin places a tentative hand on Arthur's shoulder, his skin still clammy with perspiration, still furnace hot. "You haven't before."

Arthur flips on his side, his face an array of taut lines, his jaw set in a particularly sharp one. "Well, you haven't either."

"I vowed never to," Merlin says, cocking his head in the general direction of the temple. "You know how my purity was supposed to marry me to the earth so I could save Albion?"

"The one I care for said he couldn't," Arthur says. "So I waited."

"Oh," Merlin says, mouth falling open, heart skipping a beat. "But you're supposed to marry and continue your line. House Pendragon and all of that."

"That's what my father wants," Arthur says, a little muscle in his jaw ticking. "He thinks we can save Albion by the sword too."

Merlin doesn't comment on that. He doesn't want to discuss Uther Pendragon right about now. The thought of him fills him with misgiving. He curls his body around Arthur instead, cupping his face so he can kiss it, soft, slow, a hundred times. "Maybe we can, together-"

"Father only says that because he doesn't like temple people, hates them really," Arthur says. "He says..." A shadow crosses his face. "That they cursed mother."

"They're a bit priggish," Merlin says of the people who've raised him since he was ten. "But they're not that evil."

"I suppose Father just wants to lash out," Arthur says, fanning his lashes so Merlin won't see what's in his eyes.

Merlin frames his lips around Arthur's again, sucks the bow of Arthur's mouth into his. "Sometimes I wonder," he says, "whether the druids are still out there, whether they'd... you know, let us fight together."

Arthur's pupils contract. He pushes his elbow under himself, half sits up. "If they would...I'd fight for them. I could do what I promised. Be your knight. I bet they'd marry us too and then we could do whatever we set our minds to. Together we could probably do great things."

Merlin grabs Arthur by the neck. "Arthur, we don't even know if they're still out there."

"They must be." Arthur looks around as though a druid was about to emerge from the depths of greenery that engorges the forest. "They can't have all died."

"No, but..." Merlin shakes his head, though hope does surge within him. "That's why the temple exists, because we can't find them anymore, and all that we have are cryptic writings that make little sense." Perhaps, he shouldn't have said that, considering that those writings are supposed to be an initiation secret. "That's why I am..." so alone, he wants to say but doesn't. "That's why Cornelius took power as head priest. Because he knows the druids are gone."

"Maybe he's mistaken," says Arthur. "Maybe the druids are around and they know how to save the planet, and we're not bound for the end of days."

"Arthur," Merlin cautions, even though he wants to believe he's not alone fighting the death of their planet, that the responsibility's not his. He'd also fancy living to see eighteen. "You know we can't hope that's true."

"We have..." Arthur looks down, mouth sticking out, face covered in red splotches. "We have lain together and the world hasn't come to an end, so maybe what the temple says is just a load of bullshit."

"I can't," Merlin says, unwilling to believe he's left his mother behind and bound himself to the temple for nothing, "I can't believe they'd have lied."

"Well," Arthur says, raking a hand through his hair. "Up to yesterday I'd have thought so too but look here."

Merlin's about to agree with him, when he notices that the twin suns have shifted subtly closer. The sky is no longer red, but bleeding crimson.

 

The End

**Author's Note:**

> The title is obviously not mine but a quote from William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the balcony scene.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Too Rash, Too Unadvised, Too Sudden - written by rotrude](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2565959) by [orphan_account](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account)
  * [[Podfic] Too Rash, Too Unadvised, Too Sudden - written by rotrude (reclaim)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4361555) by [bravenclawesome](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bravenclawesome/pseuds/bravenclawesome)




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